The year my family stopped doing Christmas

I don't really remember what year it was, I think i was in my 3rd or 4th year at college and things were getting a bit absurd for Christmas. None of the kids were living at home anymore and we all lived in different places. This is pre-messenger so we really didn't talk to one another very often and to be honest we didn't really know much about each other. However, we still felt obligated to get a bunch of gifts for everyone else.

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I have 3 siblings and both parents are alive and well. This resulted in hundreds of dollars in things that to be honest, none of us (or them) actually had much use for. The process was nice and we enjoyed being around family of course, but I suppose my family is really practical and we came up with an idea one year.

We were no longer going to buy gifts for Christmas

We would still spend the money and of course the parents were going to absorb the lion's share of the cost (as is tradition, right?) and instead we were all going to to on a ski trip.

The first year we went to Breckenridge, Colorado and wow was that an amazing place. The ski resort was huge (by our east-coast standards) and there was a such a wide variety of options for fun. Of course I suppose it would be helpful if your family enjoys skiing like mine does in order for this to work for you. We loved this. No more headache of thinking "did i spend enough on sister? she normally buys really expensive gifts and I don't want to look stingy!" and of course there were always the years where one or more of us wasn't doing so well financially. That's always embarrassing.

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For us, this just worked out so much better. Normally everyone would have a job. I was a bartender at the time so my job was to be the bartender and pay for all the booze. Someone else would be in charge of snacks and someone else would be in charge of something else (you get the picture.) My family is quite frugal, so we have a tradition of only going out to eat one time during these trips and the rest of the time we cook at home. It works out nicely for us.

Anyway, while I do like the Christmas traditions I have come to feel over the years that the whole buying of a bunch of stuff is kind of for kids and once kids are above a certain age I don't think that sort of commercialism is necessarily a good idea. I think as a child, this is great if your family can afford it but I have to say that the absence of this holiday is one of the things I quite like about being in South East Asia.

I have very fond memories of Christmas, just like anyone that was a kid once, but for my family at least, it was the right thing to stop doing it.